Chapter 60

"So what if there's Choudou!? What proof do you have that I'm the murderer!?"

Kamezaki lets loose a furious counterattack. I answer with everything I've got.

"Choudou... the tale of making insects fight in a jar and the lone survivor bearing the strongest poison."

"So what...? What what!?"

"Which means the Choudou jar would be filled with heaps of dead bugs, right?"

"That's why... wh... what!?"

Kamezaki's face stiffened again at my explanation; she seems to have grasped what I'm driving at. She tried to kick the trash bag on the spur of the moment, but the president snatched it away at once.

While giving him a mental thumbs-up for his quick action, I pressed on with the rest of my explanation.

"Right—by leaving insect corpses at the dump you wanted everyone to think someone had been preparing Choudou. You tried to camouflage the fact that you were disposing of evidence of murder behind the very idea of Choudou!"

"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"

While Kamezaki was still reeling from the revelation, Detective Chikage rested a hand on her chin and raised a question.

"Huh!? Why does that count as proof? Even if there are dead bugs in there..."

"Detective Chikage, what would you do if you were in the same situation as Mr. Kamakiri?"

"Um, I'd be in that room... eyes closed, under the futon, thinking 'go away, go away'..."

"Another question—if a loud noise blared while you were fast asleep, would you wake up?"

"Wouldn't that depend on the moment...? What's your point?"

"Exactly—it depends on the moment. In this case, even if Mr. Kamakiri had suffered a second anaphylactic shock, it wasn't certain he'd die."

"Ah, that's true... but wait? How does that become evidence...?"

Detective Chikage looked a little pained, turning her face away as she nodded. I kept talking.

"You forced him to choose, didn't you, Kamezaki. You made Mr. Kamakiri pick either the path leading to death or enduring the ordeal. This time was the same. Trying to kill a horsefly, he got stung by a hornet—would he end his own life, or hide under the futon and ride it out? You forced that choice on him!"

"Ugh..."

"This perfect crime kept rolling dice until Mr. Kamakiri died! You avoided destroying the hornet's nest in the apartment, and instead set up situations where he'd get stung indirectly! But you couldn't force it. So again and again you used insects for a perfect crime, and again and again you failed to kill Mr. Kamakiri, didn't you!? That's why we waited here—betting that tonight, after you'd finally succeeded, you'd come to throw away the insect corpses!"

The president murmured sadly, looking at the many dead hornets inside the bag.

"They couldn't tell males from females, so people probably asked why they didn't sting. You kept failing over and over... and these guys met their end for nothing but that... poor things..."

Letting his feelings show, I hurled words that carried every ounce of emotion I had.

"Pretending to love insects, you betrayed countless lives—countless tiny souls you stole! So, keep claiming innocence and keep trampling life, or—"

Kamezaki pleaded desperately with me.

"N-no! It wasn't like that!"

So I gave Kamezaki a choice as well.

"—or confess here and now that you killed Mr. Kamakiri, that you stole the lives of these insects, and try to atone even a little! Choose one! Choose right here! Kamezaki!"

There was nothing more to say.

With the reasoning more or less over, I was tense—maybe even scared. Once before, a culprit had lashed out the moment guilt was admitted. Feeling my heart pounding in my chest, I kept silent.

The president was ready to restrain her at any moment. Detective Chikage was there too. Holding on to that thought was the only comfort I had.

Yet that fear turned out to be needless.

Kamezaki tottered and sank down onto the flower-bed bricks. The president seemed the first to notice and asked her a question.

"Why... why... Ms. Kamezaki. Why did you... Mr. Kamakiri too... He might have disliked bugs and said some biased things, but he wasn't someone to hate that much, was he?"

Having chosen "admit guilt," Kamezaki spoke in a whisper.

"That man had no sense of responsibility whatsoever..."

"No sense of responsibility—are you talking about work?"

The president was frightened too. It must have been terrifying—if people could be murdered for reasons anyone would dismiss as a lie, everything he believed would look pitch-black; he wouldn't understand anything anymore.

"Not just work. As a human being! Long, long before coming to this apartment... I left my precious turtles with him. I was going on a business trip for weeks and asked him to look after them since I couldn't. But he hardly cared for them—no, worse, he said feeding them was a pain and shut them up in a tiny tank! What do you think happened then?"

"I-I don't know..."

"If you don't feed them, turtles turn cannibal. When I came back, what do you think was left?"

"Ugh..."

The president couldn't answer.

I could picture what Kamezaki described—a hideous, pitiful sight.

"Heads and limbs bitten off, parts of their bodies gone—only one survived alone, and even that one was stunted. When I got them back, he said to me, 'There was nothing I could do.' But I know there was. If he'd had any sense of responsibility, my precious turtles wouldn't have died!"

Detective Chikage asked,

"So you came to this apartment and waited for your revenge?"

"Yes! At first I only meant to half-kill him. I didn't plan to murder him... I kept a stink bug and watched his reaction, but he showed no sign of remorse at all... my patience ran out..."

"From the very beginning..."

"Yes... but... it hurts... The instant I admitted I'd killed someone, my heart— I ended up becoming worse than that man—worse than the person who killed my turtles—by taking even more insects, even more precious lives from everyone...!"

In the end I spoke too. I don't know why; my mouth just opened.

"You were rotten from the start. You kept living things just to hate people. You were trying to connect with humans!"

I don't know whose twisted thinking I was channeling, but cruel words kept coming out.

Maybe that was the trigger; Kamezaki dug her nails into the ground and began to shriek.

"Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

The piercing scream was loud enough to wake the whole apartment. Clutching her chest as if in agony, she sobbed over and over.

Curse others and dig two graves—her curse had come back on her; she writhed in suffering as though it had.

She was seized by detectives Detective Chikage had called and led away.

Watching it all with the other residents, I regretted that no one had sensed her murderous intent.

Maybe I was just shifting blame onto everyone else for failing to stop this tragedy.

Why couldn't I stop this sorrow?

After parting with Detective Chikage, the president and I started walking home. In the dark street the president spoke in a frail voice.

"I—I think I kinda knew Kamezaki-san did it..."

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